Teaching & Writing
Essays & Articles
Euphoric Halakha | Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations, 2023 | Read!
Chevruta: Must We Have Children? | Jewish Currents: Chevruta with Sophie Lewis, 2023 | Listen!
The Halakhah of Oppressive Speech | Emor’s Fragments: Freedom, 2023 | Read!
Mai Mevarech: A Berakha for Testosterone Gel | SVARA’s Trans Halakha Project Teshuva-Writing Collective, 2023 | Read!
Holiness Beyond the Nation State: Diasporist Halakha | Gashmius Jornal, 2022 | Read!
‘Nothing About Us Without Us’: Toward a Liberatory Heterodox Halakha | Touro Law Review with Russell G. Pearce, 2022 | Read!
How The Talmud Can (and Can’t) Teach Gender: A Review of Trans Talmud by Max Strassfeld | Lilith Magazine, 2022 | Read!
Forging New Pathways: The Trans Halakha Project | eJewish Philanthropy with R’ Becky Silverstein, 2022 | Read!
The Kranjec Test: A Response | eJewish Philanthropy with R’ Becky Silverstein, 2022 | Read!
Recorded Sessions
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On the Nose: Trans Halakha
Jewish Currents Podcast Conversation w/ R’ Xava De Cordova & Alyx Bernstein (2023)
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Chevruta: Must We Have Kids?
Conversation w/ Sophie Lewis for Jewish Currents Chevruta Column (2023)
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Trans & Jewish World-Building
Judaism Unbound Interview w/ R’ Becky Silverstein (2021)
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What Feminist Torah Needs to Look Like
Panel recorded live at Hadar (2018)
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Who Owns Torah?: Possession, Accountability & Empowerment
Recorded live at Hadar (2018)
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Preferring Sages to Prophets: Interpretation as Revelation
Shiur recorded at Romemu (2018)
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Hitlabshut: Exploring Gender & Theology Through G!d's Clothing
Shiur recorded at Romemu Yeshiva (2020)
Hot Off the Shtender
selected pieces published in SVARA’s weekly blog
“Today we’re publishing 10 teshuvot, with three more on the way—and hopefully more to come—that seek to answer our questions….They demonstrate what happens when we stop asking ‘Can we exist?’ and instead ask ‘How can we thrive?’ They demonstrate what is possible when we take who we are as a given and as a blessing, and we read the tradition authentically through what we know to be true.” (April, 2023)
How We Thrive: Torah from the Trans Halakha Project
“In our community we spend a lot of time swimming in the joyful, expansive, free-ing space of learning. In these moments, it’s important for me to hold and feel that Torah is not inevitably liberatory. I know this, because I, too, have been hurt by Torah. But sometimes when I’m with y’all, I forget. It’s on us—in collaboration with HaShem and each other—to make Torah the liberatory project we say it is.” (March, 2023)
Making the Tradition What We Say it Is
Halakha Beyond the Binary
“Halakhic discourse and practice is not about reifying a binary of yes or no; it is about creating space for clarity and authenticity in each moment of messy gradational life. Non-binary ways of thinking allow us to restore aspects of halakha that have been ignored for far too long. This isn’t a reimagining of halakha—this is halakha.” (March, 2022)
Transformative World-Building Through Halakha
“Halakha is, at its core, the sacred process of Jewish world-making, of mapping new imagined potential onto the world that is that reflects the highest ideals of what we think the world should be. The process of halakha invites us to create an imagined ideal world—a fantasy—and bring it into the material world that we occupy; it is a visionary fiction.” (July, 2021)
Dedicating Our Learning to a New Malchut
“I’ve encountered readings of this text as demonstrative of the Torah’s rejection of worldly affairs, a defense of a secluded life that includes only learning. But to take on the yoke of Torah, to cultivate our resilience in and through our tradition, is not about mere escapism. It is about resistance: when we learn, the only malkhut there is, is G!d’s.” (April, 2021)
Towards Halakhic Euphoria
“We must move beyond a framework of dysphoria. Our task, instead, is to uncover the legal principles that enable us to find the authentic, affirming, joyful, and liberatory expressions of who we are. In other words, we must reveal euphoric experiences of halakha.” (November, 2020)
Practicing Freedom in the Bet Midrash
“Liberatory learning is not what we learn about, but how we learn. The bet midrash is not a place where we go to learn about something so that we can bring that knowledge out into the world. Instead, our learning spaces are where we practice the freest forms of who we are, and the world we want to create.”